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By: Jeff Oxenford (© 2005)

Performed by: Jeff Oxenford

Inspiration

I use songs to express things that I often leave unsaid. So I wrote this song for a Christmas present. Of course, some say I’m just too cheap to buy a present.

The metaphor I used for this song was two blue spruce trees that are in our front yard. They’re very old and were recently damaged by a hail storm and then a snow storm. However, they’re still hanging in there and define our front yard.

Process

I developed the melody first, working with a partial capo on my guitar. The capo covers three strings and I used it on the fifth fret. It’s hard to know exactly what chords you’re playing with these capos, composing requires more feeling the way around the guitar, applying familiar chord shapes, but basically waiting for something that sounds good. Over a few days of just playing, an intro started to evolve. Later, I created some complementary chords.

For the lyrics, I started thinking about what I wanted to say and did some journaling. I was still stinging from a critique (justifiable) of a previous song that I needed to do a better job of painting the picture, so I needed a good metaphor. Looking out my front window, the trees just begged to be used. Over the course of a day and thinking, I started developing lines. It didn’t come easily, so I moved around a lot, doing laundry, watching a little TV, walked the dog, etc. By the end of the day, it allcame together.

I’ve played this for a few “safe” groups and keep adjusting it with each critique. The guitar part is comfortable is comfortable to play for folks, however, the lyrics are personal and therefore a challenge to share.

The song has evolved to the current structure of:

I V V C V C V C C O

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